And after it shattered today and I stared after it and then I gently cleaned it up, I sat down at my desk and imagined looking for a mug that’s somehow indestructible… but I realized then that, even if it couldn’t break, I could still lose it.

And while James is clearly better at playing chess and having a cool mustache and riding his bike uphill for a long time and watching sports, I’m pretty good at other things: spinning words, strumming the guitar, obsessing over rivers, finding good coffee shops… it all balances out nicely.

These boys made me feel like a ghost. Like they couldn’t, or didn’t want, to see me at all; like they’d rather hold my okay body and kiss my alright mouth with their eyes closed so they could imagine I was the girl with big boobs, the girl with the great hair and make-up, the better, beautiful girl from last summer.

He shook his head no. “The only scary thing was when my instructor asked me to intentionally spin the plane out. I had to do this because he needed to see that I’d know how to correct it.” I loved this. I will always remember this about him.